For freedom and liberty, low taxes, less government, high social capital, and strong national defense

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

The New Israel

As Israelis come to terms with the reality that Iran and the Palestinians seek their complete destruction, their nation will change dramatically. This post suggests how, and a subsequent post suggests how the new nation will defeat its 8 major enemies.

Israelis are now seeking new leadership to defeat the existential threat. The IDF is using its occupation of Southern Lebanon (granted by the incompetent UN) to deconstruct Hizbollah’s defenses and weapons, and to design and test the tactics, weapons and training needed to clean it out.

Less obvious changes are happening.

A Move To Offense

Faced with extinction, with no reliable allies (if the Dems get control), with a tiny land area, and all diplomatic options played out, Israel must take the fight to the enemy.

As in its past wars, it’ll use surprise in timing, weapons and tactics, so expect a period of apparently sincere Israeli diplomacy.

Abandonment of Palestinian Statehood

Expect the West Bank and Gaza to be progressively converted to sealed buffer zones policed by heavily armored internal security troops with their own air assets.

Dirty Tricks

Expect lots of these.

Israel has a Corruption Perception Index of 6.3 – better than Italy, but low for a democracy. That’s because it includes 1 million Arabs, who likely share Iraq’s CPI of 2.2. Correcting for that gives a non-Arab Israeli CPI of 7.1 - a high trust culture similar to Spain and Japan.

As the World Cup demonstrated, high trust cultures are at a disadvantage when competing with low trust culture in a rules-based framework - because in low trust societies, cheating is applauded. Pallywood and the recently exposed deceptions of the Western news agencies are classic low trust behavior.

So expect Israel to adopt a low trust war-fighting stance – rigged news photos and reports, deniable military operations, the taking of hostages, and disregard for the Geneva Conventions.

Third Strike

We survived the Cold War because of second strike - both sides were able to destroy their enemy after receiving a full first strike.

But Israel has more than one enemy. It faces not just Iran, but also its nuclear-armed supporter Russia and maybe – based on recent behavior - France. Neither of these is likely to nuke Israel directly, but either could neutralize its second-strike force with satellite tracking, ASW, and hunter-killer subs.

These indirect enemies are much larger and richer than Israel, but both are highly centralized and would suffer enormously from the destruction of their capital cities. The capability to do this to such indirect combatants can be termed third strike.

An Israeli third strike capability could use Jericho 3 IRBMs - each can deliver an 0.4 Megaton warhead on Moscow or Paris.

Weapons Self Sufficiency

It’s possible the US denied Israel weapons and/or spares in the recent conflict to force it to comply with the Franco/US UN resolution – we know for sure that State is investigating Israel’s use of weapons used routinely by US forces.

A nation facing destruction can’t afford this second-guessing, so going forward expect Israel to deploy only weapons it sources itself. That could be a problem when it comes to replace its F15Is and F16Is in 10 years, but by then either Israel or its enemies will be gone.

For this reason, I think it unlikely that Israel will deploy the THEL short-range missile defense. Plus of course it’s defensive.Energy IndependenceSo far as I can make out, Israel's energy comes from imported coal and oil. Since the coming wars are likely to make oil a scarce commodity and risk the loss of ports, expect a crash program to build nuclear power plants.